There is an app you can download for a cell phone that will do a pretty decent job of showing angles. Normally I dismiss these techie things but as I said this one is actually okay if you are okay to have measurements in 1 degree increments only. It goes under the clever name of "Angle Finder" and is free. You can pay for a version that gives you decimal precision, but I haven't found it necessary. There is a setting in mine that will show fractional angles, also. I'd download it and then go out and start taking measurements for caster and camber...this is going to give us a good idea of what you have on both sides. It isn't hard and even if you have one of those cheapo plastic magnetic angle finders you can see what is happening. Your front axle obviously suffered some sort of a blow in the past, but let's get some measurements first. As for your tie rod, if your axle was hit hard enough in the front to cause the tie rod to bottom out, you would be able to see that very clearly by sliding under the axle and looking up at it or by looking at the back side. Most of the time, the axle is hit in the front when somebody is driving along and hits a large rock or curb or something. If it was hit that hard generally speaking there is a good chance it is ruined. Now on the other hand if some prior owner hit that rock and ruined the tie rod at the same time (almost impossible to avoid this) then it is very likely a tie rod from something else was used to repair things and it was a bit too long. I've seen this happen before. I've also seen folks cut a tie rod and then weld a square iron piece on to shorten it to the correct length. And I should mention somebody welded a square piece of iron on my tie rod at some point in time...I suppose to strengthen it but that's just a guess. For now let's put on our detective hats and get some data.
